DISGRUNTLEMENT WATCH, PART EIGHTEEN. The anti-Bush fever is now reaching big-ticket donors:

One mainstay of the group, the investment manager Tucker Andersen, told other members that he planned to withhold his vote and his money from the president. "I would be surprised if more than half the people in the room actually wrote checks for him," Mr. Andersen said in an interview yesterday. The Bush campaign has raised a record sum of more than $200 million already, and the club's president, Stephen Moore, said he still hoped to raise $10 million from members to buy advertisements related to the presidential race. But the discord within the club may represent a larger slip in the support for the president in his conservative base. . . .

Mr. Moore himself helped initiate the debate Tuesday evening, people present said. After the club's board members, founders and some donors had finished interviewing four candidates vying for its support, the participants retired for dinner around the corner at an Italian restaurant, Patsy's, where Mr. Moore asked Mr. Andersen about his skeptical take on the administration.

Mr. Andersen, who is also on the boards of Gopac, an organization that seeks to groom Republican candidates at the state level, and the libertarian Cato Institute, said he soured on Mr. Bush over the Medicare overhaul.

In an interview, he said he had argued that proponents of limited government might be better off with a Democrat in the White House and the Republicans in control of one house of Congress because the divided government would block any new program from either side.

While the Medicare bill has done a lot to make conservatives angry, the Kaiser Family Foundation reports that senior citizens don't much like it either. "Seniors express considerable concerns about the new law, with initial reactions to the law netting a mean score of 31 on a zero-to-100 scale, on which a zero means that they feel very unfavorable toward the new law and a 100 means that they feel very favorable toward the new law." All-in-all, this isn't looking like a very good result from the president, especially considering all the early reporting suggesting that Bush's Medicare bill was going to drive a stake through the heart of the Democrats' political fortunes.

--Matthew Yglesias

UH, INDIANS ARE ALLOWED TO VOTE, TOO. A couple of months ago, there was some rightfully ticked-off chatter in the blogosphere regarding the stupid and quasi-racist notion that, quote, if it weren't for the black vote, the Democrats would be nowhere. (The clearest example of this came a couple of years ago from CNN analyst Bill Schneider, who explained on-air that Democrats were so "dependent" on the black vote that without them, the 1992 and 1996 elections would have been nail-biters and George W. Bush would have won an overwhelming electoral victory over Al Gore.) Josh Marshall nicely paraphrased this as the equivalent of saying "the Dems are just hopelessly sucking wind among real voters and thus have to resort to padding their totals with blacks." It's a dumb thought experiment in the sense that, of course if you strip either party of a big voting constituency, they would be less competitive. And it's quasi-racist in the implication that African-Americans somehow don't or shouldn't count.

Something similarly offensive is going on when Rep. Tom Davis, (R-Va.), the former National Republican Campaign Committee Chairman, says of Stephanie Herseth's narrow win in South Dakota, "If you take out the Indian reservation, we would have won."

One can't help but wonder if this is exactly what the GOP intends to do for November's rematch. After all, it was just two years ago that Republican operatives --- abetted by their media shills -- tried to suppress the reservation vote with scurrilous and malicious charges of widespread voter fraud. (For background, see here, here, here, and here.) Somehow, I think we'll be seeing more of that this fall.

--Nick Confessore

JUST POSTED ON TAP ONLINE. Six months ago, there was no reason to expect Republicans to lose the congressional seats up for grabs in special elections in Kentucky and South Dakota. But sure enough, Democrats Ben Chandler and, as of last night, Stephanie Herseth are now members of the House of Representatives. Terence Samuel details how the House banded together to open the door to its newest members, and what it may mean for November. Elsewhere on TAP, we round up the news from the swing states in this week's Purple People Watch.

WORTHWHILE CANADIAN INITIATIVE. David Frum mocks the center-left Liberal Party of his native Canada:

Canada's governing (but maybe not for long!) Liberals have just released their election platform. Among the promises: funds to recruit 8,500 additional service personnel for Canada's ailing military. But wait! How does this promise jibe with the Liberals' attacks on Conservative leader Stephen Harper as "un-Canadian" for his earlier commitment to strengthen the Forces? Answer - the Liberals promise that the additional 8,500 will be formed into a special brigade dedicated to "peace support." What on earth does that mean? Given the Liberals' past record on national defense, I can only guess that it means that while they intend to hire more troops, they don't intend to buy them any weapons.

Now I'll admit that the platform statement (warning: PDF) isn't incredibly clear, but this sounds to me like a very good idea:

A Liberal government will launch a Peace and Nation-Building Initiative with three principal elements:

• Increase the Canadian Forces by 5,000 personnel, creating a new brigade and greatly enhancing Canada’s capacity for peace support. This will boost significantly our ability to participate in multilateral operations that are consistent with our interests and values. It will enable our military to assume a bigger role in bringing peace, security and democracy to troubled nations.
• Deploy the Canada Corps, which will harness the expertise and idealism of Canadian civilians with a special emphasis on recruiting the energy of young people. A primary mission of the Canada Corps will be to provide help and advice to fragile and failed states to build the institutions of good government, rule of law and respect for human rights.

This is exactly the sort of thing the United States should be doing and that we should be encouraging our allies to do as well. The recent wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Kosovo have taught us that the American military is almost inconceivably good at fighting and winning wars. In all three cases, the troubles have come after the "end of major combat operations" during what the specialists call "post-conflict stabilization," known to the masses by the somewhat inaccurate term "peacekeeping." And our troops aren't bad at this because there's something wrong with them, they don't do it well because it's not what they're trained and equipped to be doing.

Post-conflict stabilization forces aren't soldiers without weapons, they're soldiers with light weapons trained in things like working with local civilians and conducting operations that involve hefty law enforcement components. Right now, the bulk of the Army's forces with such training are in Reserve or National Guard military police or civil affairs units where, naturally enough, they're not as well-prepared as active duty soldiers would be. Since it's all but inevitable that the United States will find itself involved in more such missions in the future, it stands to reason that we should build a better capacity to conduct them within the active duty military.

Now Prime Minister Paul Martin might somehow foul this up in the implementation, but it's a very sound basic concept, and there's no reason an uber-hawk like Frum should find it objectionable.

--Matthew Yglesias

WILL TENET TALK? Big day on the intelligence front as the president lawyers up with regard to the Valerie Plame inquiry, the FBI steps up its investigation into the Ahmed Chalabi fiasco with polygraphs, and longtime Chalabi-antagonist George Tenet resigns as Director of Central Intelligence for unspecified "personal reasons."

One interesting question at this point is whether the newly out-of-office Tenet will be a bit more forthcoming regarding the two above-mentioned controversies as well as the related tales of interference into the intelligence process by the Office of the Secretary of Defense and the Office of the Vice President. Tenet's long had a strange place in the administration -- consistently defended by the president against some fairly vehement attacks from the right, while consistently at war with the political operatives in the OSD and OVP. His continued presence has, thus, been a bit mysterious and seemingly the result of a strong desire to keep his job combined with a strong feeling on the part of the White House that it was better to keep him inside the big tent.

If that changes, things could get pretty . . . interesting, seeing as how the administration has already taken an awful lot of heat from defectors from within its ranks.

--Matthew Yglesias

JUST POSTED ON TAP ONLINE. When CACI International, whose employees ran interrogations at Abu Ghraib, threatened to overtake Halliburton as the poster-business for military contracting gone bad, what did the Pentagon do? Gave them a new $88 million contract, that's what! Christy Harvey has all the unflattering numbers and more.

Also on The Daily Prospect:

• Why Oil Prices are Rising: Don't look for the usual suspects. By Robert B. Reich.
• Mole in Our Midst: Finally, a grand, unified theory that explains Bush's domestic and international policies. Little did we know. By Matthew Yglesias.
• Ending the "Working Poor": The fight over minimum wage. By Robert B. Reich.

DEFENDING BILL SAFIRE. Lord knows Bill Safire isn't my favorite columnist, but now that his latest column has been subjected to a left-right tag-team assault from Kevin Drum and Jonah Goldberg I think it's in need of a defense. Kevin and Jonah both object to Safire's "contrarian" post, but this really needs to be put in context:

Because my staunch support of the war in Iraq has generated such overwhelming reader enthusiasm, it's time to re-establish my contrarian credentials. (Besides, I need a break.) Here's a crusade sure to infuriate the vast majority of penny-pinching traditionalists:

The time has come to abolish the outdated, almost worthless, bothersome and wasteful penny. Even President Lincoln, who distrusted the notion of paper money because he thought he would have to sign each greenback, would be ashamed to have his face on this specious specie.

For one thing, Safire's completely correct on the merits. More important, the thing about "contrarian credentials" comes in the middle of a joke. Safire writes for The New York Times op-ed page, which is mostly read by liberals. Indeed, now that Thomas Friedman and David Brooks have both gone wobbly, he's the last war-backer left standing. Safire's position on the war can't possibly have "overwhelming reader enthusiasm" -- he's kidding. What's more, it's really hard to think of a good lead for a column about pennies (just check out Jonah's awkward lead to his latest column -- this stuff isn't easy), so he deserves to be cut some slack. The really objectionable thing about the column is that the penultimate paragraph reveals it to be little more than a stealthy plot to boot Franklin Delano Roosevelt from his well-deserved spot on the dime.

--Matthew Yglesias

THE DEAL ON DRUGS. Yesterday, I blogged about Jim Glassman's brazen spinning on behalf of Abbott Laboratories, one of the firms that, via the drug industry trade group PhRMA, sponsors the Web site Glassman hosts, Tech Central Station. Glassman was defending, on rather inconsistent and dubious grounds, Abbott's decision to raise prices on an AIDS medication called ritonavir by some 400 percent. Rivka of Respectful of Otters, a fantastic blog about health care, politics, baseball, and other matters, knows a lot more than I do about the pricing of AIDS drugs -- she works in an HIV clinic. And she has a couple of posts up that shed considerable light on Abbott's decision.

For one thing, although Abbott and their shills are crying poverty to regulators -- Abbott discovered seven years after introduction of the drug in question that they needed to recoup R&D; costs -- the company reports record sales to its investors. Tellingly, while R&D; costs were less than 9 percent of sales, the company's gross profit margin was a whopping 51.9 percent. Oops! So why did they raise the price? Rivka gives a good technical explanation, but the executive summary is this: Abbott is merely maneuvering to increase the market share of one of their other AIDS drugs, Kaletra, which contains ritonavair. It's a play for market dominance. It has nothing to do with R&D; costs. This has doctors so ticked off that some of them are organizing a boycott of all Abbott's products.

Now, obviously, increasing market share is something that most companies generally try to do. In principle, I don't have a problem with that. Nor do I have a problem with pharmaceutical firms making a healthy profit. But drugs, like other health-care goods and services, are not like other products -- for both practical reasons (the front end of their research pipeline is heavily subsidized by the taxpayer) and moral ones (you don't die if the you can't afford a Rolex, but many people will die if they can't afford the AIDS cocktails). Moreover, drug companies have shamelessly manipulated the patent laws in ways that, far from spurring innovation, encourage them to focus on things like increasing market share for existing drugs rather than coming up with new therapies. That is why there's a good case to made not only for reforming the patent laws, but also for taking steps -- such as giving Medicare the power to bargain with drug firms, as the Veterans Administration and Pentagon do -- to bring down prices on expensive medications, steps even most die-hard liberals wouldn't apply to the market in general.

--Nick Confessore

ATHEISTS IN FOX HOLES. Strategy Report debunks a bit of hand-me-down cultural wisdom:

The old adage that there are "no atheists in foxholes" does not appear to apply as much as it used to. It turns out that the active duty troops in the American armed forces are somewhat less religious than the population as a whole. 

Americans over all are 78 percent Christian, 1.3 percent Jewish, .5 percent Moslem, .4 percent Hindu, 13 percent unknown or none and the rest various other sects and faiths. But the troops are 55 percent Christian, .3 percent Moslem, .27 percent Jewish, .04 percent Hindu, .24 percent Buddhist and 34 percent unknown or no preference. Part of this may be a generational thing, as the troops are younger than the population as a whole. People become more religious as they get older. Another factor is probably education, as the high education standards for recruits means those in uniform have several years more formal education than their civilian peers. More literate too, as people in uniform read at a level a full year ahead of civilians. As people become more educated, they tend to be less religious.

Securing more respect for atheists in public life has sort of dropped off my radar screen as a priority, but I'm glad to see this result. It should be noted, though, that you often get rather different results from asking people what they believe (i.e., "are you a Christian?") and asking them how they behave (i.e., "do you pray regularly?") and you might get a different outcome taking the latter approach. The fact that troops are better-educated than the public at large also strikes me as something most people probably aren't aware of.

On a somewhat related note, Thomas Schaller of the Gadflyer analyzes the casualty data from Iraq and finds that Red states are not, in fact, doing a disproportionate quantity of the dying. Indeed, hippie Vermont, home of the dread Howard Dean, has suffered the most.

--Matthew Yglesias

THE MYTH OF THE CONTRACT WITH AMERICA. Roll Call reports that congressional Democrats:

[A]re in the conceptual stages of putting together their version of the "contract," crafted a decade ago by then-Rep. Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.). The GOP's plan laid out a series of promised changes they pledged to enact if elected to the majority and was the centerpiece of a campaign in which Republicans rode a wave of voter discontent to their first House majority in 40 years.

Democratic sources say in their version leaders will unveil a "palm card" with a handful of themes designed to define the party and explain why it would provide a better alternative to the current majority. Unlike the original contract, which laid out specifics such as support for Congressional term limits and applying workplace laws to Congress, this version is expected to shy away from detailing policies.

This is kind of a silly, on many levels. I mean, so they're gonna have palm cards with a handful of themes to define the party? Fine. But that's not exactly a new thing. And it's not exactly analogous to the Contract With America. The more important point, however, is that the Contract With America itself wasn't what the Democrats, Roll Call, and a lot of other people seem to think it was.

Put simply, the Contract with America was not remotely important in helping the GOP win back Congress in 1994. As Christopher Caldwell reveals in this fascinating -- and, I think, still prescient in many ways -- Atlantic article from 1998, the Contract was a:

[L]ist of ten propositions -- tax cuts, social-service cuts, and such government reforms as term limits -- announced as a manifesto six weeks before the 104th Congress was voted into office. There were two problems with the contract. First, two thirds of Americans didn't know it existed. Second, Republican polling, done by Frank Luntz, had been fraudulently presented to the public as showing that the contract commanded 60 percent support in all its particulars. An NBC/Wall Street Journal poll, in fact, found that people disagreed, by 45 to 35 percent, "with most of what the GOP House is proposing to do."

In practice, the Contract served more as an organizing agenda for the new House majority.

The truth is, I'm not sure if there are many lessons the Democrats can learn from the 1994 elections specifically, which was an anti-Democrat perfect storm that makes President Bush's troubles look like a minor squall.

--Nick Confessore

GETTING DRAFTIER. The Associated Press reports that the Army is going to start relying even more heavily on so-called "stop loss" orders, of which I've written before:

The Army will prevent soldiers in units set to deploy to Iraq and Afghanistan from leaving the service at the end of their terms, a top general said Wednesday.

The announcement, an expansion of an Army program called "stop-loss," means that thousands of soldiers who had expected to retire or otherwise leave the military will have to stay on for the duration of their deployment to those combat zones.

The expansion affects units that are 90 days away or less from deploying, said Lt. Gen. Frank L. "Buster" Hagenbeck, the Army's deputy chief of staff for personnel. Commanders have the ability to make exceptions for soldiers with special circumstances; otherwise, soldiers won't be able to leave the service or transfer from their unit until they return to their home base after the deployment.

This is probably the correct response to the manpower situation the military's currently facing, but it's obviously not viable -- or, really, acceptable -- as a long-term solution. What's worse, the more the military burdens the volunteers it's got, the harder it's going to be to recruit people in the future. Members of the National Guard have come to learn that they've committed themselves to something much more arduous than they might have initially believed, and now the active-duty military is learning that the stated lengths of their enlistments can be deceptive. The country needs a real answer to this manpower problem -- a higher end-strength and a restructuring to produce more of the kind of troops we need, and fewer who are better-suited for outdated tasks.

--Matthew Yglesias

MEDIA MATTERS. Los Angeles Times editor John Carroll delivered a scathing and much-deserved rebuke to Fox News in a speech delivered recently at the University of Oregon and reprinted here. The speech itself is about journalism ethics more broadly, not Fox, but he catches Bill O'Reilly in a bald-faced lie (never corrected), discusses last year's University of Maryland survey showing the factual unreliability of Fox's broadcasts, and describes Fox's output, not unfairly, as "pseudo-journalism."

Fox News chairman Roger Ailes responds here, with a Wall Street Journal o-ped. He writes:

Mr. Carroll essentially announced that the reason Fox News Channel is the No. 1 cable news network and is gaining viewers is because the American people are stupid and gullible. In addition, he deliberately confused our highly rated news analysis and opinion shows like Bill O'Reilly with our hard news coverage. Mr. Carroll cites not a single example of what he calls "pseudojournalism" from our actual news coverage. He cites only Bill O'Reilly's opinions and an old push poll that purports to show that more Fox News viewers believed things that were not true about Iraq and the War on Terror than did viewers of other outlets. But he cites no instance of our having reported any of these things.

How pathetic. Carroll "essentially announced" nothing of the sort. What he cited was survey data showing that Fox's news broadcasts systematically mislead the network's viewers about matters pertaining to Iraq. He's not blaming Fox's audience. He's blaming Fox. And rightly so. They've betrayed their viewers' trust. As for his risible claim that a 2003 University of Maryland survey conducted by reputable social scientists was "an old push-poll," well, that's just more of the same baloney.

I also like how Ailes dodges the point about O'Reilly. That Ailes can't distinguish between lying and having an opinion says a lot, I think, about Fox's brand of journalism.

Speaking of bad journalism, remember the World Journalism Institute, which teaches its students that Christian journalists should practice "Biblical Objectivity" -- that is, religious advocacy journalism. We had noted in May that NPR reporter Barbara Haggerty, herself affiliated with the WJI, had authored an outrageously distorted story on John Kerry's Catholicism, a pretty good illustration of why "Christian objectivity" isn't compatible with straight journalism. I was hoping NPR's ombud would weight in this, which he didn't. But NPR reporter Vince Pearson recently did a news segment on WJI which mentions, without naming Haggerty, that one of his colleagues was formerly affiliated with it. Pearson's segment is decent. It doesn't come down that hard on the institute, and provides both sides of the story (something WJI has in the past instructed its students not to do). But listening to the broadcast, I think you'd get the gist that there's something fishy going on there.

--Nick Confessore

CHALABI AND IRAN. Today's New York Times confirms with details the rumors that have been bouncing around for a while about Ahmed Chalabi passing cryptographic intelligence on to Iran:

American officials said that about six weeks ago, Mr. Chalabi told the Baghdad station chief of Iran's Ministry of Intelligence and Security that the United States was reading the communications traffic of the Iranian spy service, one of the most sophisticated in the Middle East.

Now one interesting thing here is that, near as I can tell, the first person to report this specific allegation was none other than Michael Ledeen, AEI fellow and strong Chalabi backer, in this National Review Online column:

It's fascinating to watch the anti-Chalabi campaign in Washington. You probably can't keep up with it, but some intel officials in town are saying two things to the journalists: 1) We broke the Iranians' communication codes, so we were reading their mail. Chalabi found out about this, and told the Iranian intelligence chief in Baghdad. 2) The Iranian immediately contacted Tehran to tell them that we had broken the code. Then they said to journalists, "you can't write about this because it would jeopardize our people."

Ledeen thinks this charge is ridiculous. If the Iranian station chief in Baghdad knew the codes were compromised, why would he communicate that information back to Teheran in the compromised code:

Impossible! If the Iranians knew that we were reading their mail, they would never let us know that they knew. They would continue to use the codes, but instead of sending accurate messages they would use those channels for disinformation against us.

According to the Times, however, that's exactly what happened:

According to American officials, the Iranian official in Baghdad, possibly not believing Mr. Chalabi's account, sent a cable to Tehran detailing his conversation with Mr. Chalabi, using the broken code. That encrypted cable, intercepted and read by the United States, tipped off American officials to the fact that Mr. Chalabi had betrayed the code-breaking operation, the American officials said.

The Times also confirms Ledeen's report that journalists knew about this some time ago and held off on reporting it until now at the request of intelligence officials who said it could "compromise a vital, continuing intelligence operation." Apparently no one told Ledeen. The FBI is investigating the question of who leaked this information to Chalabi, a process that includes interviewing the infamous "civilians at the Pentagon who were among Mr. Chalabi's strongest supporters." The number of people who possessed the relevant information is finite and, presumably, rather small, so it'll be interesting to see if the president chooses to take any proactive measures on this or if we'll see a Plame-esque effort to "cooperate" with the investigation largely through the foot-dragging method.

Whoever turns out to be the culprit, and whatever rank he holds, it should be noted that the general climate in which this took place was established by decisions at the very highest level. Chalabi was treated and portrayed as a man whose interests were all-but-identical to those of the United States and, under those circumstances, why wouldn't you share sensitive intelligence with the future leader of the New Middle East?

--Matthew Yglesias

"WE NEED TO NOT DISCRIMINATE." There's a brazen little bit of dishonesty in President Bush's remarks at today's National Conference on Faith-Based and Community Initiatives, as reported by the AP. According to their account, Bush said he believed "that groups should be allowed to access social service grants so long as they don't proselytize or exclude somebody simply because they don't share a certain faith."

That's a great sentiment, and one shared by a substantial majority of Americans. But it's not consistent with the 2002 executive order that Bush signed to put his faith-based initiative into action. That order acknowledged that there could be no proselytization or discrimination against beneficiaries of any program, but specifically authorized discrimination in the employment practices of religious groups receiving federal social-service grants. Bush's remarks, if accurately reported, are either astoundingly clumsy or designed to gloss over one of the most controversial elements of the initiative.

Assuming this 3-year-old Pew Center poll is still representative, nearly 80 percent of Americans oppose this provision. Even the centerpiece of "compassionate conservatism" would be unpopular if it weren't for misleading statements such as this.

--Jeffrey Dubner

JUST POSTED ON TAP ONLINE. Al-Zarqawi has discovered how to turn psychological warfare against the American public. The insightful Richard B. Woodward explores how we help our enemies commit "terrorism by other means."

Also on TAP, Mary Lynn F. Jones takes the floor to defend the U.S. Senate. Zell Miller may not think much of his current employer, but Jones says that the upper body has all the strength and flexibility it needs.

THERE HE GOES AGAIN. Over on The Intersection, Chris Mooney catches Tech Central Station's Jim Glassman being sneaky again. This time Glassman, along with TCS editor Nick Schultz, penned an op-ed for The Los Angeles Times about a campaign by Public Citizen to allow generic drug companies to manufacture Norvir, an AIDS medication whose manufacturer, Abbott Laboratories, recently increased the price of the drug by 400 percent:

In their relentless campaign against technological innovation, left-wing activists last week came up with a new approach. They're invoking a 24-year-old law that would force a drug company to give up its patent on a key medicine and let generic competitors produce the drug.

The activists are hoping to slash the price of Norvir (ritonavir), an HIV drug produced for the last eight years by Abbott Laboratories. The National Institutes of Health awarded Abbott a grant of $3.5 million for general research on protease inhibitors that ultimately helped in the development of the drug. But Abbott also spent $300 million of its own money to conduct trials and bring Norvir to market.

If the activists -- led by James Love, an associate of Ralph Nader -- are successful, they will severely retard the development of new drugs, not to mention other innovations. This is the kind of Luddite nonsense that kills people.

Actually, this is the kind of flim-flam that embarasses op-ed pages, as it did not long ago when Glassman wrote an op-ed for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch attacking the documentary "Super Size Me" without disclosing that TCS is subsidized in part by McDonald's. Same thing going on here. As Mooney points out, the bio line for Glassman and Schultz does not disclose that TCS is sponsored in part by PhRMA, the drug industry trade assocation of which Abbott is a member. (Generic drug manufacturers have their own trade group.)

Truth be told, this new op-ed shills even harder than Glassman's fast-food op-ed did. It buys hook, line, and sinker Abbott's official explanation for why it had to increase the price -- an explanation which on its face doesn't make sense. Glassman and Schultz write:

Abbott said it needed the increase to recoup the costs of developing the drug and to finance future AIDS research and development efforts. Why now? Abbott said it had discovered that the drug had an added attraction that made it more valuable: It can boost the activity of other AIDS drugs, including its own Kaletra. The price increase prompted howls of outrage from some senators and groups that claimed the company was price-gouging on an essential medicine.

Well, duh. If Abbot really had suddenly discovered the old price wasn't enough to recoup R&D; costs, there would have been no reason not to increase Norvir's price whether or not the drug turned out to have a nifty new feature. Discovering the new feature presumably cost Abbott nothing or almost nothing. If they truly needed to raise the price 400 percent -- 400 percent? -- to recoup costs, it shouldn't matter whether or not the drug has a bonus feature. From the evidence presented, it seems pretty obvious Abbott just felt like raising the price and making a bigger profit. Indeed, Glassman and Schultz implicitly concede the point. After trying to arouse your pity for poor Abbott Laboratories, they drop the schtick and state their case as one of high free-market principle. Screw those whiny consumer advocates! Companies can charge whatever the market will bear! "Perhaps Abbott raised its price too high too fast," they write. "But that's Abbott's decision to make. A free economy permits companies to set their own prices, constrained only by the forces of competition and supply and demand."

This is classic Glassman -- whatever threatens the business interests of one of TCS's sponsors, he casts as a threat to the free market itself. Others more knowledgable than I can and will debate the merits of Glassman's argument about drug prices and how best to encourage innovation, a goal which, his slur against consumer advocates such as James Love notwithstanding, most thoughtful people are behind. (TAP's own Merrill Goozner showed in this excellent article that that research funded by the public sector -- not the private sector -- is chiefly responsible for a majority of the medically significant advances that have led to new treatments of disease.) But regardless of the merits of Glassman and Schultz's argument, readers deserve to know who's helping pay the bills behind the scenes.

I note that when the Post-Dispatch caught him out last month, Glassman promised he'd "make sure" that any relevant sponsorships were "absolutely clear in the future." Oops.

UPDATE: Reader E.B. notes that Glassman and Schultz can't even be bothered to get the details right.

[T]he authors managed to demonstrate vast ignorance of their subject matter with one sentence: "It [ritonavir] can boost the activity of other AIDS drugs, including [Abbott's] own Kaletra." Anyone who's paid the slightest attention to AIDS drugs in the last five years knows that Kaletra is not a drug, it's a brand name for a combination of lopinavir *and ritonavir*. In other words, what the research suggested was not a new combination, just a possible benefit from increasing one ingredient, which has been easy to do all along: "We have discovered a new use for chocolate chips: adding additional chips to chocolate chip cookies to make them more chocolaty." But I guess this kind of article is aimed at people who don't know anything about the pharma industry, except for general notions e.g. that it invents things.

Kinda undercuts Glassman's argument, doesn't it?

--Nick Confessore

SELLING OUR TROOPS SHORT. Is it the liberal media that's contributing to potential failures in Iraq and Afghanistan, or the conservative media? Matt Yglesias and Matt Welch recently commented on efforts to claim that liberals in general, and the "liberal media" in particular, are "in danger of talking the United States into defeat in Iraq," in the words of Morton Kondracke. But what could be more defeatist than yesterday's syndicated column by Robert Novak?

The handful of valiant American warriors fighting the ''other'' war in Afghanistan is not a happy band of brothers. They are undermanned and feel neglected, lack confidence in their generals and are disgusted by Afghan political leadership. Most important, they are appalled by the immense but fruitless effort to find Osama bin Laden for purposes of U.S. politics.

This bleak picture goes unreported because journalists are rarely seen there. It was painted to me by hard U.S. fighters who are committed to the war against terrorism but have a heavy heart. They talked to me not to undermine policy but to reveal problems that should and can be corrected.

Afghanistan constitutes George W. Bush's clearest victory since the terrorist attacks of 9/11. The Taliban regime has been overthrown, eliminating al-Qaida's most important base. But the overlooked war continues with no end in sight. Narcotics trafficking is at an all-time high. If U.S. forces were to leave, the Taliban -- or something like it -- would regain power. The United States is lost in Afghanistan, bound to this wild country and unable to leave.

This is basically a direct rebuttal of Bush's primetime claim last Monday that "the nightmare of the Taliban is over, and that nation is coming to life again." Novak may not count himself among the disgruntled, but he certainly hasn't been singing the president's praises lately. (A couple weeks ago, he devoted an entire column to a man who didn't clap at Bush's American Conservative Union speech.)

The column is noteworthy more for Novak's overall negativity than his criticism of Bush. The hunt for Osama bin Laden is a "helpless cause"? If successful, its greatest effect would be "to boost President Bush's sagging popularity"? Let me see if I have this straight: Liberals are putting the worst possible face on the war?

--Jeffrey Dubner

IMBALANCE OF POWER. Politicians don't serve working-class interests, so the working class doesn't vote. Because the working class doesn't vote, politicians don't serve its interests. The latest special report from The American Prospect examines how political inequality and economic inequality reinforce each other and how we can work to reverse the cycle. In the first two installments, Christopher Jencks outlines the situation, while Theda Skocpol details how genuine civic organizations were replaced by modern advocacy groups. Check back over the next two weeks to read more on the subject, or pick up a copy of our June issue to read the whole report.

The special report was produced in collaboration with Demos, which is cosponsoring this weekend's Inequality Matters Conference in New York City. The conference will feature many of the sharpest liberal commentators -- Bill Moyers, Barbara Ehrenreich, John Podesta, and Stan Greenberg, to name just a few. More information can be found here, and you can register for the conference here.

--Jeffrey Dubner

FOR SHAME. This week New York magazine publishes a cover story by Alexandra Polier, the subject of much rumor and innuendo a few months ago, when media outlets across the country floated her name as a "Kerry intern" who may have had an affair with the candidate. Needless to say, this proved little more than a smear. And this story gives Polier a chance to tell her side of the story -- which is more than most people who have been wronged by the press ever get. It's a mesmerizing read. Polier gets to call up all the journalists, political operatives, and gossip-hounds who wrote inaccurate and/or unkind about her and press them as to how they got it wrong. Many of them come off as, to put it bluntly, complete cowards -- people who felt no qualms about invading Polier's privacy, but can't be bothered to speak to her when she calls them for some information. (A few come off as more contrite.) Some choice bits:

Though my name wasn’t mentioned in the initial Drudge "exclusive," it made its first appearance in the British tabloid The Sun on Friday, February 13. The article, by one Brian Flynn, referred to Kerry as a SLEAZEBALL in the headline and said I was 24 (didn't I wish). It purported to quote my father at home in Pennsylvania discussing the senator, saying, "I think he’s a sleazeball." The article also claimed to quote my mother as saying Kerry had once chased after me to be on his campaign. My mother was not even home when Flynn called, and Flynn didn't tell my father -- who at this stage was unaware of the Drudge allegations -- that he was interviewing him. Instead, he presented himself as a friend trying to get hold of me to talk about John Kerry. My father, a Republican, who believed Kerry had flip-flopped on various issues, said, 'Oh, that sleazeball.'" Here's how it reappeared in Flynn's piece: "There is no evidence the pair had an affair, but her father, Terry, 56, said: 'I think he's a sleazeball.'" Drudge quickly linked to The Sun's interview.

Here's what happens when Polier calls up Flynn.

Afraid I would lose my temper, I asked my editor to call him first.

"I was calling to ask you who your source was for your story which named Alex Polier as the intern in the Kerry story," she said.

"Ah, many people have asked me; it was a fantastic source," he said. "I broke that story to the world, you know," he added proudly. "But your source was wrong," she pointed out. He paused, startled. "You've just ambushed me," he cried. "You've ambushed me!"

"I think you should speak to Alex," she said and passed me the phone.

"Hello," he said, sounding nervous.

"I'd like to talk to you. I'm writing a piece and have some questions."

"It's not a good time right now," he said. "Let's meet up next week."

"Why did you quote my mother when she wasn't even home?" I persisted.

"I really can’t talk about this right now, Alex," he said.

When I finally tracked him down the following week, he was brusque and told me to go through The Sun’s PR office. I asked him about my mother again, but he kept saying, "Sorry, Alex, proper channels." Reached in London, Lorna Carmichael, The Sun’s PR manager, refused to comment. I went to Flynn's apartment, and spoke to his wife through the intercom. "Go away and leave us alone!" she cried. "He’s not going to come down or speak to you."

What a jerk. And check out how Democratic spin-meister Chris Lehane -- widely suspected of peddling the rumor to various media outlets, a charge which he conspicuously never quite denies when pressed by Polier -- comes across:

I called Lehane himself, who, having backed the wrong team, is now running his own political PR firm in San Francisco. I asked him where he'd first heard the rumors about Kerry and me. He blamed political reporters. I asked him if he had used the rumors to try to help Clark. He denied it. "There are just so many media outlets out there now, Alex, that these kind of baseless rumors can easily get turned into stories," he said smoothly, and then the phone went dead.

I called him right back, but he didn't answer. I called again less than an hour later, and this time his outgoing message had been changed to, "Hi, you've reached Chris. I'm traveling and won't be able to retrieve my voice mail." I wondered how he was able to run a PR company without retrieving voice mail.

Heh. Lehane can dish it but can't take it. Why does that not surprise me?

There's more, but I'll just leave that to Polier -- read the article. You'll get an intro to all the sleazy methods certain kinds of reporters use for stories like this, such as lying to a subject's friends and family to get yearbook photos or other kinds of information. No doubt some will say the come-hither cover photo of Polier undermines her claim of being embarassed and humiliated by all that earlier press attention. But that doesn't bother me much. To be honest, reading her story makes me not a little ashamed to be a reporter.

--Nick Confessore

AD OUTED. Last week I criticized this New York Times article on the two candidates' negative advertising for what is really a congenital failure of the dailies -- their unwillingness to adjudicate factual claims even when clear evidence is available. In the Times artice, reporter Jim Rutenberg pulled a classic "on the one hand this and on the other hand this," writing, "While Mr. Bush's campaign has been singled out as going particularly far with some of its claims, Mr. Kerry's campaign has also been criticized as frequently going beyond the bounds of truth." (TAP's own Rob Garver had thoughts on this, as well.)

The Washington Post's Dana Milbank and Jim VandeHei revisited the issue of negative advertising in this article yesterday. It is a far superior specimen of campaign reporting. Reviewing a series of Bush campaign ads, they write:

The charges were all tough, serious -- and wrong, or at least highly misleading. Kerry did not question the war on terrorism, has proposed repealing tax cuts only for those earning more than $200,000, supports wiretaps, has not endorsed a 50-cent gasoline tax increase in 10 years, and continues to support the education changes, albeit with modifications.

Scholars and political strategists say the ferocious Bush assault on Kerry this spring has been extraordinary, both for the volume of attacks and for the liberties the president and his campaign have taken with the facts. Though stretching the truth is hardly new in a political campaign, they say the volume of negative charges is unprecedented -- both in speeches and in advertising.

Three-quarters of the ads aired by Bush's campaign have been attacks on Kerry. Bush so far has aired 49,050 negative ads in the top 100 markets, or 75 percent of his advertising. Kerry has run 13,336 negative ads -- or 27 percent of his total. The figures were compiled by The Washington Post using data from the Campaign Media Analysis Group of the top 100 U.S. markets. Both campaigns said the figures are accurate.

Was that so hard? Now, my friend Josh Marshall is considerably less impressed with the Post article, because it doesn't quite come out and call a spade a spade. The reporters present clear evidence that the Bush campaign -- and in particular campaign chairman Marc Racicot -- has flat-out lied about John Kerry's record:

One constant theme of the Bush campaign is that Kerry is "playing politics" with Iraq, terrorism and national security. Earlier this month, Bush-Cheney Chairman Marc Racicot told reporters in a conference call that Kerry suggested in a speech that 150,000 U.S. troops are "universally responsible" for the misdeeds of a few soldiers at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison -- a statement the candidate never made. In that one call, Racicot made at least three variations of this claim and the campaign cut off a reporter who challenged him on it.

In early March, Bush charged that Kerry had proposed a $1.5 billion cut in the intelligence budget that would "gut the intelligence services." Kerry did propose such a cut in 1995, but it amounted to about 1 percent of the overall intelligence budget and was smaller than the $3.8 billion cut the Republican-led Congress approved for the same program Kerry was targeting.

The campaign ads, which are most scrutinized, have produced a torrent of misstatements. On March 11, the Bush team released a spot saying that in his first 100 days in office Kerry would "raise taxes by at least $900 billion." Kerry has said no such thing; the number was developed by the Bush campaign's calculations of Kerry's proposals.

On March 30, the Bush team released an ad noting that Kerry "supported a 50-cent-a-gallon gas tax" and saying, "If Kerry's tax increase were law, the average family would pay $657 more a year." But Kerry opposes an increase in the gasoline tax. The ad is based on a 10-year-old newspaper quotation of Kerry but implies that the proposal is current.

Other Bush claims, though misleading, are rooted in facts. For example, Cheney's claim in almost every speech that Kerry "has voted some 350 times for higher taxes" includes any vote in which Kerry voted to leave taxes unchanged or supported a smaller tax cut than some favored.

The first couple of examples, especially, are pretty damning; they go beyond exaggeration into flat-out deception. The headline of the article should read "Bush Campaign Lies About Kerry's Records" instead of "From Bush, Unprecedented Negativity; Scholars Say Campaign Is Making History With Often-Misleading Attacks." (And I want to know more about how the campaign cut off the reporter who tried to challenge Racicot on that conference call? Did they actually boot him off the call?) Still, this is a very good piece of reporting, with solid analysis that presents alternative views but comes down with the weight of the evidence. Good for the Post.

--Nick Confessore

HERE WE GO AGAIN. The Associated Press reports polling that puts a hypothetical Kerry/McCain ticket with a double-digit lead over the Bush/Cheney one.

53 percent to 39 percent? Those numbers are pretty impressive. Still not gonna happen, though.

--Nick Confessore

JUST POSTED ON TAP ONLINE. Commentary on George W. Bush's Iraq speech, why economics should be considered a "values" issue, and American Idol. Yeah, that's right: American Idol. What, you thought we watched nothing but NewsHour?